European Commission - Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology

11/14/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 11/14/2024 08:36

Booking must now comply with the Digital Markets Act

As of today, Booking Holdings Inc. (BHI), designated as gatekeeper on 13 May 2024, must ensure that its online intermediation service, Booking.com, complies with all relevant obligations of the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Concretely, this means hotels, car rental companies, and other providers of travel services that depend on Booking.com to reach their customers can begin to enjoy new opportunities, for instance:

  • So-called 'parity' clauses are prohibited by the DMA. Therefore, hotels, car rentals and other service providers using Booking.com are now free to offer different (including better) prices and conditions on their own website or other channels than on Booking.com.
  • Booking must not introduce other measures with the same effect as 'parity' clauses. For example, Booking is not allowed to increase commission rates or de-list offers of business users if they provide different prices on another website than on Booking.com. This means that other platforms and travel service providers can compete under fairer conditions, leading to innovation and lower prices.
  • Hotels and other travel services will have real-time and continuous access to data that they and their customers generate through the use of Booking.com, offering these businesses new insights.
  • Business users can now choose to transfer the data they generated on Booking.com to alternative platforms. This will allow hotels and other relevant travel service providers to develop more innovative deals and tailored offers, positioning them more competitively on the market.

As of today, Booking is required to demonstrate its full and effective compliance with the DMA by outlining the measures undertaken in a compliance report. The public version of this report is accessible on the Commission's dedicated DMA webpage. Additionally, Booking has submitted to the Commission an independently audited description of techniques it uses for profiling consumers, along with a non-confidential version of the consumer profiling reports. Finally, the Commission ordered Booking to keep any documents and information which might be relevant to assess and monitor effective implementation of and compliance with the DMA.

Read the full press release.